Just One More
by Charis M
Summary: In which the universe has (as far as she's concerned) a perverse sense of humour, but Milady isn't laughing. [Plausibly canon AU prompt fic. Trigger warnings: discussion of pregnancy and abortion. Part 1 of Impossibilities.]
1. Chapter 1

**Just One More**

_For a Tumblr AU meme, as prompted by athena10867. This came out a little darker than I anticipated.  
Trigger warnings: discussion of pregnancy and abortion._

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_prompt #5. one night stand and falling pregnant au - Milathos_

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When she realises what's happened, her first thought, in absolute mind-blanking panic, is _'No.'_ Her second, hard on the heels of the first, is, _'That's impossible.'_

For all that she uses it as a weapon, Anne and her body have never been on particularly good speaking terms. It has been responsible for far too much trouble in her life, particularly when she'd started to become a woman, that she's more accustomed to ignoring its vagaries than not. That's the only reason she can think of to explain why it takes her nearly three months to realise that she isn't bleeding, and what the ramifications of that are.

She sits on the bed of her tiny rented room and hugs her knees to her chest and counts. Counts again. Swears, counts a third time, and swears _again_ because it's safer than the tears which suddenly (stupidly, and she feels all the more foolish for wanting to cry) threaten. Her attention to womanly matters may be selective at best, but she knows how to count, and no matter how she adds the numbers up they lead her to the same place.

She flops back onto the bed with a disgruntled sigh. It's almost enough to convince her that there _is_ a god - and that, like most of the men she's known, he's a spiteful wretch.

It's almost amusing, though, in the most bitter of ways. In the months of their marriage, she had prayed (as much as she ever might) for a child, first because it would have meant security and later because she'd loved Athos (truly loved him, damn it all). Goodness knows they had certainly tried enough that she _should_ have conceived, but nothing had ever happened. And now, one night - one damned night, and _this_ happens.

Should she swear at him or herself or the very world in all its bleak unfairness?

Swearing, cathartic as it may be, will solve nothing. The question better asked is what to do about it. She knows how to take care of her situation if she decides to end that, but while that would be the straightforward, sensible answer (the girl she'd been once - the woman she'd been a year ago - would have done it without hesitation, no matter what the Church says of sin), she wonders. A softer part of her (reawakening, reviving, the part that still loves him in spite of all the death and blood between them) wonders: _what if?_

And yet, with all that death and blood, what would be one life, one death more between them?

Nothing, she thinks, and everything, and there lies so much of the problem.

\- x -

_It's foolishness, and they both know it, but that doesn't stop things from happening._

_When he returns to his lodgings that evening, she's there waiting for him. Common sense would have dictated she return the clothes he'd lent her via messenger or in some neutral public space, but she's raw and smarting from the afternoon's events, and his words keep ringing in her head, and even if there was truth in her retort that won't silence them. (There was a lie too; what he thinks of her will _always_ matter, despite how fervently she wishes it didn't.)_

_He stops short inside the door, and heat briefly flares in his eyes before they go flat again. "What in god's name are you doing here?" he demands. (He doesn't ask how she got in. This is not their youth; he knows what she is capable of.)_

_She jerks her chin at the pile of clothes neatly folded on the table. "Returning those."_

_"So you have. Now get out."_

_But there's an undercurrent to his words that she knows too well, because it finds a harmonic echo deep within her. Maybe that's why she looks across the room at him in silence, unmoving._

_"Anne -" it's a warning growl._

_"It's not your respect I want," she says baldly, and just like nearly everything she's said to him it is both truth and falsehood, for nothing between them can ever be simple again._

_His jaw works, clenches against what must have been angry words to match the fire in his eyes. "You have it all the same," he says, tight and strangled as if he were now the one with the rope about his throat, choking on his hopes, "and more, damn you, _everything_ -"_

_And then his mouth is on hers, and his hands are hauling her up against him, and if it were just the anger she'd push him away, but the passion is not only rage and so she meets him - takes, devours, clutching at him greedily even as he does the same. They've been building to this for weeks (months, _years_) and she doesn't have the energy to fight it, doesn't want to, and so she licks into the heat of his mouth, pushes against his clothes, drags him down and he follows her willingly, eagerly, and -_

_It's a foregone conclusion._

\- x -

"How do you know it's not the king's?" he asks when she tells him, and even if she can hear the pain beneath the indifference she wants nothing so much in that moment as to cut him to the bone and make him bleed instead. After everything, his first instinct is still to believe her a liar, and he deserves no pity for that, particularly when he understands _nothing_.

The look she gives him is flat and hard, though, betraying none of her fury or turmoil. "Did you really think I wouldn't take steps to ensure that I didn't end up with a royal bastard?"

His mouth twists in a grimace. "Wishing you hadn't, now that you know about -"

"I have no illusions," she snaps out, cutting him off before he can finish. And she doesn't - hasn't allowed them since he ripped them away and let her hang. She dreams, sometimes, but dreams are only shadows and she does not let them touch her waking hours. A bastard, even a royal one, would do nothing to improve her precarious situation. "Besides, I pity the Queen. Hers is not a position to be envied."

He doesn't understand that either. It's plain on his face, and as exhausted as she is right now - emotionally, mentally - she can't bring herself to care. All they ever seem to do is hurt each other, and she's so damned tired of caring, and of bleeding again and again because of it. She loves him, and she always will, but that doesn't mean that in this moment (as all too often) she can't hate him just as much.

He looks just as weary as she feels as he scrubs a hand over his face. "Why are you telling me?" There's genuine confusion in his voice.

She shakes her head. "I don't know."

This time, it's nothing but the truth.

\- x -

He hadn't come, in the end. She'd known he wouldn't, but to see that knowledge made manifest still hurt. The ache is duller now, much like prodding an old wound, painful but somewhat remote. She wonders if it will heal with time or whether this less tangible scar will always be with her, hidden even better than the one at her throat.

There is a cup of tea untouched before her; the steam, when she inhales, is sharp and green. It had been easy enough to find the woman she needed, to get pennyroyal and tansy and vervain; all cities are the same, once you know where to look, and this lesson is one she learned well as a girl. The choice should be an easy one: she is a woman alone in the world of men, with little to her name but her skills and a small hoard of coins and valuables. A child will only hinder her survival. Every shred of common sense tells her to end this now. She has done far, far worse in her years.

And yet, she hesitates. Sentiment should not rule her - sentiment serves no purpose in her endless quest to survive. Her finger traces the rim of the cup, slippery with condensation.

_And yet ..._

_\- finis -_

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_Endnotes: The three herbs mentioned were all historically used to "promote menstruation", which was one coded way of saying they were abortifacients. (They're also poisonous in sufficient dosages but that's a separate issue.) Given what we know of her background, it seemed likely Milady would know about those sorts of things - and at least strongly consider that path._  
_I honestly couldn't decide which way she'd go in the end, so I cheated and left things deliberately open. XD_


	2. Chapter 2

**Just One More - B-Side  
**

_For an anon request on Tumblr for Athos' POV for this story. I may be developing a habit of Athos castigating himself for being a fool. (It's accurate. He's just far from the only one being foolish on this show.)_

_Not sure if this is at all what you had in mind, my dear anon – the original piece was so deeply Milady's that it was surprisingly hard to write from Athos' side. If it's not what you were hoping for or if you there are questions you'd hoped to have answered that aren't, please feel free to let me know. I am more than happy to babble about things at the slightest provocation._

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_'Fool,'_ he thinks after, because he can't stop thinking about that night – and, later still, _'thrice-damned fool,'_ because he should know better, but the admonishments do nothing.

Things should never have reached that point between them. And yet sense and should-be are so often mere afterthoughts when it comes to her, because she is more heady than the most potent spirit he's ever tasted, clouds his mind more than wine and war alike. She has been a weakness from the first lie and will be one until her last breath, because when he is around her reason ceases to have meaning, and all that remains are the passions he tries so hard to tame.

He'd wanted this once, more than anything, back when he'd been a fool yet unknowing and loved a dream. He'd held her against him, soft and sweet, closed his eyes and drunk deep of the scent of flowers and imagined the flat stomach beneath his hand rounding with a child – imagined their children, filling the quiet halls of his family home with laughter and warmth.

That dream is dead, buried, burned to ash, and yet when she tells him, it haunts him once more, like the ghost of flowers on his pillow.

_'Fool, fool, stupid naïve fool.'_

He believes her. After everything, against his will and the sense that seems to elude him, he believes the words true, if only because there had been a raw honesty in her words he'd only ever heard once before. It doesn't mean he wants to believe – god knows he wants nothing of the sort – and yet for all that he is a fool, it is not he who lies, even to himself. (He wants, even now, and the intensity of that wanting terrifies him more than he will ever confess.)

And yet he does not go. He _cannot_ go, even before Tréville's hand is there on his arm, because he cannot forsake one duty for another (and though he had already failed his duty to her years before, that thought is no less a coward's refuge than being glad the choice was taken from him). He thinks of her there, waiting and wondering, and thinks that perhaps she too already knows, and it is no consolation. She will hate him for it. He deserves no less.

And yet in the depths of war he wakes sometimes to the ghosts of high laughter and fields of flowers and, though he should know better, _hopes_.

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_Endnotes: Questions or prompts? Hit my Tumblr askbox if you'd like. I am, as always, myalchod over there.  
_


End file.
